“Publicist Dana Kaye tells me, ‘We have worked with plenty of authors where their publisher has told them they’re doing nothing for the book.’ Furthermore, authors are on their own when it comes to developing their websites and social media presence” (Friedman).
I’m sure you’ve been inundated with the need to build your platform, create your brand, work that social media. And you’re wondering what does it all mean and how much work do you have to do. And, um, what kind of work is it? “Marketing Help & Resources” at KD Did It is intended to lay out the steps you can or need to take. To lay it out for you and provide more resources.
So, you’ve finished your book. You put it up on Amazon, Smashwords, and more. Now what?
Well, if you’ve come this far, you’re late for the party. Just as all those sites you’ve been avoiding have been telling you, you should have been working on your brand and your platform when you first started writing your book. It means that it will take longer for your book to sell, that’s providing that your book has been decently edited and formatted — yes, editing and formatting do make a difference. And it’s okay if you haven’t been doing all this prep.
Before You Send Out Your Book . . .!
What’s involved? An author platform. Publishers, especially, like it if potential clients have been building that platform with a website and social media engagement, having these elements of your ebook and promotional platform squarely in place before reaching out to the media or even hitting the publish button for your latest manuscript.
If you want a traditional publisher but haven’t been able to interest one, a good blog with books that are selling can attract their interest. If you’re fine with self-publishing, then you’ll want a blog that at least promotes your book. And the best blogs engage readers in advance.
Marketing Your Self
You need to make direct customer connections — social media.
Everywhere you look, the experts tell you to set up your author webpage, to engage potential readers ahead of publishing your book. How you do this will send you into a morass of possibilities and must-haves. It’s enough to drive you to drink.
You may be comfortable with marketing yourself, and that’s great. In fact, I’m jealous! Or, you may be reading these words and re-thinking this whole writing gig. Not to worry. There are agents, publicists, and consultants who can help. There are also degrees of involvement you should consider. And I’m hoping these marketing posts will make it easier on you — you won’t have to do as much googling, being confused, or tearing out your hair because Introduction to Book Marketing will lay out the steps you need to take and in what order.
Tools and Strategies You Can Use to Market Your Book
Use this part of Introduction to Book Marketing, part of Author Resource, to build your marketing plan, one that provides the steps on how you can promote the book, including your publicity campaign.
These are all upcoming posts, unless it is already linked.
There are so many ways of marketing your book, from:
- It starts with building your author platform, preferably before your book launch:
- Create your brand
- Come up with a memorable URL — preferably http://YourAuthorName.com
- Create your author website — anything incomplete or “coming soon” won’t do when starting publicity — know that you can get your web address but don’t have to actually build that site right away. At the least you’re guaranteeing that your name/URL will be yours when you’re ready!
- Email marketing, include a link to your website in the signature and in the footer
- Newsletters, that yep, include a link to your website in the footer
- Include links to your site within newsletter and email content
- Blogging about yourself, your book, your thought processes, inspirations, etc.
- Create your brand
- A website makes it easier to:
- Find you/your book when readers do a search on your name, pen-name, book title, or keyword
- Provides contact information for a publisher’s catalog, a writers group, a professional association, or author collective — and makes you look more professional
- Create landing pages to promote your work
- Entice with calls-to-action
- Own your material, which doesn’t always happen on social media sites
- Find you/your book when readers do a search on your name, pen-name, book title, or keyword
- A website can lead to:
- Blog swaps
- Do guest blogging with a link back to your site in the article
- Link backs and exchanges
- Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.
- RSS feeds
- Social media promotion — develop those relationships months before your book goes on sale
- Easy access to sneak peeks, extra content, etc.
- Free promotion in that you can include your URL on all your promo materials: press release, one-sheet, and press kit
- Public relations includes:
- Get business cards printed that include your URL
- Join literary and writing organizations and those in your nonfiction field
- Submit your work to literary magazines — Lucent Dreaming is interested in newbie authors
- Bookstore and trade show appearances
- Having a website URL you can announce at readings, signings, panel discussions, etc.
- Set up blog tours (organize this months in advance!)
- Interviews (radio, podcast, TV, print, etc.) be sure to include your URL or that your URL is mentioned
- Put together a media kit that could include, ahem, your URL on all your promo materials:
- A sales letter written for bookstores, chains, and anyone else to whom you want to sell your book
- A sales sheet that describes details of the book
- Write press releases
- Write submissions to newspapers, magazines, editors, articles, etc.
- If you choose to do some TV or radio advertising or paid Google or Facebook ads, be sure to include your URL
- Professional author photo (also useful for your book’s back cover)
- Speaking engagements
- Your elevator pitch
- Real-world conversations at the library, at a bookstore, on an airplane, you tell someone you’re a writer. They ask where they can read your books. You say “check out my website at . . .”
- Include your URL on any posters and other printed material announcing a reading or other event
- Your book (before you launch) needs:
- Expert level editing and proofreading
- An expressive title (and for nonfiction, a descriptive subtitle)
- A captivating description, excerpt, back-cover copy, and/or summary
- Amazon offers to include a “Look Inside Feature” for readers to get a quick idea about your book
- Be sure to include your URL somewhere on the cover and/or on the information page
- A quality book cover designed with your target audience in mind — don’t forget to include your URL
- Behind-the-scenes, before launch:
- Determine your marketing target audience, as opposed to your reading target audience
- Pertinent metadata, algorithms, and keywords
- An analysis of what’s working
- Behind-the-scenes, after launch:
- Solicit for book reviews (before AND after launch) from bloggers, magazines, journals, newspapers, etc. — be sure they have your website address for them to include in the review or critique
- Book swag
- Video (with your URL):
- At the top of your YouTube video descriptions and in the video itself — include your website URL in any annotations in your YouTube videos that mention your site
- On your book trailers
- Taped readings
- Interviews
- Behind-the-scenes mini-documentaries
- Video poems, etc.
- Audio files (include your URL)
- Podcasts (include your URL)
Source: Robley
An Outline of What’cha Gotta Do
There are millions of books out there and we all want to be heard, so if we want to get our books out there, we have to do the marketing. I’m having to face it, hence the research on websites, social media, ads, email lists, etc., *sighing*. If I have to do it, I reckon I’ll have to research it, and I’ll share what I learn with you.
Know too that it’s not just the marketing knowledge barrier, but the cost that can be an issue, which means setting priorities and putting your money and your time to its best uses.
Authors need to bring attention to their books through an authentic, unique way, starting with:
- Accept that you’ll need to promote yourself — take full ownership of your author platform and career
- Build your audience before you launch, focus on relationships
- Spread your message, promote yourself as meeting the needs of your readers — don’t brag
- Outsource what you can afford to (and the parts you really hate)
- Focus on one or two core channels
- Get creative:
- Barter services
- Use low-cost, scrappy tactics
- Crowdsource
- Reinvest what you earn
- Schedule blog content in batches
- Create templates for your processes to make the best use of your time — and so you don’t forget some vital information
- Embrace who you are and double down on your unique personality and worldview
Credit to: Grabas
People Who Can Help
There are plenty of businesses out there whom you can pay to help market your book. Whether you use them or not depends on your budget.
Launch Lab gives authors a crash course in the fundamentals of marketing their books with an eye toward career longevity. Sponsored by the independent creative-writing organization Grub Street in Boston, Massachusetts, think of it as a long-term-marketing bootcamp for authors. It was founded by agent Eve Bridburg when she started to wonder Why is there all this succor and great stuff for the first half of the [publishing] journey, and then it all disappears?
And just when the writer really needs the help!
Launch Lab will help you plan for your future and how to push. How to talk your publisher into helping. Give you the courage to go beyond your boundaries.
Check out 40 Free Tools for Authors for a ton of assorted info for a nice variety of help that includes marketing, as does eBook Authors: 17 Great Information Sources.
\
Aryn Van Dyke has a useful post in LinkedIn, “What is Book Marketing?“.
Publishing Talk has a handy post “10 Ways to Market Your Book If You Really Don’t Like Marketing” that really speaks to me.
Exploring More . . .
You may want to also look at assorted posts in Building Your Author Website.
Marketing Help & Resources is . . .
. . . what any author needs to know about promoting their work. The various social media platforms, book launches, behind-the-scenes analytics, how to use your website, why you should consider blogging, offbeat ideas,
So, yeah. You gotta market yourself if you want to sell your books.
As Marketing Help & Resources is in no way complete, I would appreciate suggestions and comments from anyone on marketing with which you struggle or on which you can contribute more understanding.
If you found this post on “Introduction to Book Marketing” interesting, consider subscribing to KD Did It, if you’d like to track this post for future updates.
C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan . . . which website issues are your pet peeves? Also, please note that I try to be as accurate as I can, but mistakes happen or I miss something. Email me if you find errors, so I can fix the . . . and we’ll all benefit!
Satisfy your curiosity about other Marketing posts by exploring its homepage or more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to explore Formatting Tips, Grammar Explanations, Linguistics, Publishing Tips, the Properly Punctuated, Word Confusions, Working Your Website, and Writing Ideas and Resources.
Resources for Introduction to Book Marketing
Some of these links may be affiliate links, and I will earn a small percentage, if you should buy it. It does not affect the price you pay.
Bidilică, Mihaela. “How to Get Noticed as a Writer—Before and After Getting Published.” PublishDrvie. 21 Mar 2024. Accessed 4 May 2024. <https://publishdrive.com/how-to-get-noticed-as-a-new-author.html>.
BookBaby. n.d. Accessed 25 Apr 2024. <https://blog.bookbaby.com/?s=How+to+throw+a+book+launch+party>. Assorted articles on doing a book launch.
Friedman, Jane. “The Age of the Algorithm“. Scratch. Preview issue. Web. 22 Oct 2013.” An alternative article, as this URL has disappeared, is “Authors: How to Reach Readers in the Age of the Algorithm”. <https://selfpublishingadvice.org/authors-how-to-reach-readers-in-the-age-of-the-algorithm/>.
⸻.⸻. Jane Friedman.com. n.d. Accessed 19 Jan 2024. <https://janefriedman.com>.
Grabas, Kimberley. “Author Platform: Why You’re Struggling and How to Fix It.” Your Writer Platform. n.d. Accessed 24 Apr 2024. <https://yourwriterplatform.com/author-platform/>. Download a free book.
Penn, Joanna. How to Market a Book.. Originally published YEAR. Curl Up Press, 2017. <https://amzn.to/4aPSqQO>. Ebook.
Robley, Chris. “21 Ways a Reader Might Find Your Author Website.” Book Baby. 17 Oct 2013. Accessed 3 May 2024. <http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/10/21-ways-a-reader-might-find-your-author-website/>.
Spatz, Steven. “Book Launch Ideas for a Successful Event.” BookBaby. 13 May 2021. Accessed 25 Apr 2024. <https://blog.bookbaby.com/how-to-promote-your-book/book-launch/planning-a-book-launch>.
⸻ ⸻. “Harness Social Media To Sell Books.” BookBaby. 2 July 2021. Accessed 25 Apr 2024. <https://blog.bookbaby.com/how-to-promote-your-book/online-book-marketing/social-media-marketing-to-sell-books>.
Pinterest Photo Credits
1976 San Diego Comic Book Convention by Alan Light is under the CC BY 2.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons.
